Religious Housing Co-operatives and their Correlations with Religious Belief in Young Adults

Religious Housing Co-operatives and their Correlations with Religious Belief in Young Adults

Author:

Sylwester, Eva

Abstract:

This study looks for differences between residents of two Christian religious housing co-operatives (N = 23) and residents of a secular fraternity house who self-identified as Christian (N = 8) on variables related to Christian religious attitudes and practices. Compared to the secular control group, religious housing co-operative residents scored significantly lower on the Religious Doubts Scale (Altemeyer, 1988), significantly lower on the Faith Development Scale (Barnes, Doyle & Johnson, 1989), significantly higher on the intrinsic subscale of the Religious Orientation Scale (Allport & Ross, 1967), significantly lower on the extrinsic subscale of the Religious Orientation Scale and significantly more indicative of Right-Wing Authoritarianism on the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2005). Religious housing co-operative residents also scored significantly higher than secular housing co-operative residents on measures of religious behavior: frequency of prayer, frequency of reading the Bible or other religious texts, current frequency of church attendance and frequency of church attendance before graduating from high school.